CHARLES Il. 
147 
who would not receive the Sacrament according to the rites of the 
Church of England, take the oatlıs of supremacy and allegiance, and 
renounce the doctrine of transubstantiation. Oaths already existing 
excluded Catholies from the House of Commons; but the Test Act 
drove them also from the House of Peers, and from every official posi 
tion. It was particularly aimed at the Duke of York, who had long 
been known to be a Catholie. True to his convietions, he at once 
resigned command of the fleet-—a position in which he had rendered 
considerable service to the country. The Duke had recently married 
ns his second wife a Catholic princess, Mary d’Este, daughter of the 
Duke of Modena. "This fact had given additional inteusity to the 
Protestant feeling of the nation. "The Duke’s daughters by Anne 
Hyde were subsequently married—Mary, the older, to William, 
Prince of Orange; the younger, Anne, to Prince George of Den: 
Mark. 
17. In 1673 the rule of the Cabal came to an end. Chifford, as 
R Catholic, was driven from office by the Test Act. 
Shaftesbury played the re of an ultra-Protestant, and Pant 
; v4 ssolved. 
Jecame the leader of the opposition party. "The control 
öf affairs passed into the hands of the Karl of Danby, & man of good 
character, a strong friend of the Kstablished Church, and an ardent 
pholder of the royal prerogative. 
18. In 1678 a disgraced clergyman, named Titus Oantes, pretended 
to have made a great discovery. Before taking orders, 
Üates had been a zenlous Dissenter; and after his oxpul- 4 The 
; 7 ; , . Popish 
sion from the clerical office, had professed himself a con- Plot.” 
vert to the Catholie faith. (Gross misconduct had driven 
him from the seminary where for a while he had been studying for the 
hriesthood, and he came over to England, annowncing that he }:08- 
sesscd the secrets of a plot to murder the King, burn London, and 
massacre the whole Protestant population of England. Oates told his 
story with shameless effrontery, and, unfortunately, found some pre- 
"ared to believe him. Kncouraged by Shaftesbury, for political pur- 
poses, the silly and malicious fable was the means of sending many 
innocent Catholics to the block. "The King saw clearly enough that 
Untes and a wretched crowd of imitators were swearing away the lives 
of honest men ; but he had not the courage to resist the furious out- 
burst of fanaticism. Oates was lodged in Whitchall Palace, received 
A pension of £1,200, and, with something akin to blasphemy, was 
called “ the saviour of the nation.” The plot might have failed at the 
outset had not the magistrate before whom Oates made his first 
deposition been found dead in the fields the next morning, Without 
Stopping to reason, men saw in this event “ confirmation sure” of 
Öates’s story. 
19. It was Stting that the Parliament which accepted T’“u4s Oates